What do you do if your product management internship isn't teaching you the most important lessons?

Communicate with your supervisor or mentor about your concerns and goals, and seek out additional learning opportunities or projects to supplement your internship experience.

Don't wait for a formal mentorship program. Instead, identify leaders you admire, even if they're in different fields, and reach out proactively. Explain your goals and ask specific questions. Many professionals are willing to share insights but are rarely asked. Diverse perspectives can enrich your understanding and skillset in unexpected ways.

Your advice on seeking mentors for learning product management is spot-on. Mentors play a crucial role in providing valuable insights, experiences, and advice. Identifying mentors among your direct manager, senior product managers, engineers, or designers allows you to tap into diverse perspectives and expertise. Initiating conversations, asking questions, seeking feedback, and shadowing them when possible are proactive ways to learn and absorb knowledge. Learning from their successes and failures, and emulating their best practices and habits, provides a practical and hands-on approach to developing your skills in product management.

- Identify experienced product managers within your organization or network who exhibit the skills and knowledge you aspire to learn, approaching them for mentorship. - Express your specific learning goals and challenges, asking for guidance, feedback, and the opportunity to shadow them on projects. - Foster these mentorship relationships by showing initiative, gratitude, and a willingness to contribute, ensuring a mutually beneficial and educational experience.

Your emphasis on initiative and proactivity is commendable advice. Taking the lead by proposing ideas, suggesting improvements, and willingly accepting challenges showcases a proactive approach. Identifying problems, exploring opportunities, and understanding customer needs independently reflects a self-driven attitude. The validation of assumptions, testing of hypotheses, and measurement of outcomes contribute to evidence-based decision-making. By delivering results and communicating your impact effectively, you not only demonstrate value but also contribute positively to the overall success of the team or organization. This proactive mindset is a key driver for personal and professional growth.

- Proactively seek out additional responsibilities and projects that align with your learning goals, demonstrating your eagerness to grow and contribute. - Propose solutions to observed challenges or areas for improvement within the team or product, showcasing your problem-solving skills and initiative. - Engage in self-directed learning by researching industry trends, best practices, and tools that can enhance your skills and benefit your team.

Ask different product managers if you can join them in various meetings, to understand how they handle certain activities. Nearly 100% of product management is communication. (Learning from users, customers, Sales & Support teams - then informing management, Sales, Marketing and others of the product plan). If you can see and compare the different methods that PMs use to gather user pain points and to communicate their product plans, you can see which work best and which will work for your products. - Build A Better Product Manager -

engaging in various aspects, such as building prototypes, running user tests, conducting interviews, analyzing data, writing user stories, and creating roadmaps, provides invaluable practical experience. Experimenting with different tools, methods, and frameworks allows for a well-rounded understanding of the discipline. Embracing the learning process, including making mistakes and iterating on solutions, is essential for growth. Seeking feedback and incorporating it into your approach not only accelerates learning but also contributes to continuous improvement in your product management skills.

- Volunteer for tasks or projects that push you out of your comfort zone, providing hands-on experience and the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge. - Take on side projects related to product management, either within the company or on your own, to practice and refine your skills. - Reflect on each experience, identifying what you learned and how you can improve, turning every task into a learning opportunity.

- Attend industry events, workshops, and meetups related to product management to meet professionals and learn from their experiences. - Join online communities and forums where product managers share insights, ask questions, and offer support, actively participating in discussions. - Leverage social media platforms like LinkedIn to connect with product managers, thought leaders, and organizations, expanding your professional network and visibility.

Learning of any form in a PM internship has a ton of value. If the internship isn't going well, that in and of itself is a learning, cause a real-life PM role has it's own ups and downs. We would all like it to be a straight line upward path, but it's often not the case. A few things to consider are below 1. Leverage the company resources to learn about best practices 2. Improve domain expertise around topics like AI, data, UX, etc 3. Build your network within and outside your immediate groups 4. Seek mentors who can provide other forms of learning 5. Try to make the best of the situation - try to setup small wins, maybe ship a feature instead of an entire end-end flow, etc.